In recent years, vehicles are required to enhance security performance for preventing vehicle theft and dragging.
As a system for enhancing security performance, a vehicle remote monitoring system is proposed to monitor a present position and states of a vehicle, locks and unlocks doors, starts up an engine and performs other operations in remote places by using a cellular phone (e.g., a car communication system by use of portable mail function (i-mobisses), [online], updated: Apr. 16, 2004, Apex Communications Co., Ltd., (searched May 10, 2004).
Specifically, various items including monitor items such as “vehicle present position confirmation,” “vehicle state confirmation,” and “map viewing,” and operation items such as “door lock/unlock,” and “engine remote startup” are listed on a display screen of a cellular phone, and the user selects desired items from them to transmit mail.
When the selected items are monitor items, information of the specified items is received as mail in a user's cellular phone. By browsing it, the user can obtain the information. When the selected item is an operation item, a specified operation (e.g., engine startup) is performed in the vehicle. Mail indicating that the operation has terminated is received in the cellular phone.
In the above vehicle remote monitoring system, however, monitor items selectable by the user are only listed. Therefore, for example, when a present position of a vehicle and a map in the vicinity of the present position are to be obtained at the same time, first by selecting “vehicle present position confirmation” and transmitting mail, a present position information of the vehicle is obtained. Then, by selecting “map viewing” and transmitting mail, detailed map data in the vicinity of the vehicle present position is obtained. In this way, an operation must be performed for each of the items to be monitored.
Thus from among plural listed monitor items, each of the items the user desires at that time must be selected and mail must be transmitted. As the number of the items to be monitored (items to be selected from a list) increases, the number of the user's operations will increase.
Therefore, the monitor method in the above vehicle remote monitoring system lacks user's operability and is very difficult to use particularly to aged or other users unfamiliar with cellular phones. The above system has been difficult for application to a wide range of users.